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Entries with the tag: dale tallon

The Sunshine Boys of hockey are sitting behind a glass, watching ancient Jaromir Jagr tutor some of the young Florida Panthers, kicking around the dynasties and semi-dynasties each has built.

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him,” said Dale Tallon, 65, talking about his 81-year-old sidekick Bill Torrey.

“He brought me here and I only came because of him. And now we have stability up top — a blueprint from Chicago, Bill had a blueprint with the Islanders. We know what we want to do and we’re on the same page with everything we do — and it’s a blessing to have him around so I can run things by him.”

And finishing each other’s sentences, like the hockey couple they are, Torrey said: “And to get this right, you have to have somebody with an eye. Dale has an eye.”

SUNRISE, Fla. – The Florida Panthers announced today that Executive Vice President and General Manager Dale Tallon has signed a multi-year contract extension. As per club policy, terms of the contract were not disclosed.

Florida also announced that Tom Rowe has been named Associate General Manager. Rowe had been serving as Head Coach of the Panthers’ AHL affiliate, the Portland Pirates this season.

“Dale and Tom bring a wealth of leadership, credibility and hockey experience that will enrich our organization for years to come,” Florida Panthers Owner, Governor and Chairman Vinnie Viola said. “We have benefited tremendously from their expertise already. The success of both our NHL and AHL clubs this season is a direct result of Dale and Tom's leadership and stewardship. With the stability provided by the recent Broward County Commissioners vote, we look forward to continuing to strengthen our team both on and off the ice as we work towards the singular goal of winning the Stanley Cup.”

Florida Panthers Executive Vice President and General Manager Dale Tallon announced today that former National Hockey League defenseman Hal Gill will join the Hockey Operations staff as the club’s Manager of Player Development.

Gill will work closely with newly-appointed Director of Player Development Bryan McCabe in monitoring the progress and development of the organization’s prospects.

“We are very pleased to welcome Hal to our organization,” said Tallon. “We are honored to have someone with his level of hockey experience work with our prospects and assist them in developing their young careers.”

SI's Allan Muir looks at the Eastern Conference's "also-ran" (i.e. non-playoff) teams, determining whether their summertime moves have improved the respective 8 non-playoff finishers or whether the teams are just treading water, and he discusses a team not talked about very much in the Florida Panthers:

Florida Panthers (91 points, 10th)

You have to give them credit. The Panthers proved to be surprisingly competitive last season, far exceeding expectations for a roster that relied so heavily on youth and fading glory. They’ll go with a similar formula next fall, hoping that youngsters such as Aaron Ekblad and Jonathan Huberdeau continue to progress and veterans like Jaromir Jagr have more than fumes in the tank.

The team’s one major move of the summer saw it ship out one inconsistent forward in Jimmy Hayes for another in Reilly Smith. The former Bruin is the more established of the two with 33 goals and 91 points during the past two seasons, and he fills a need at right wing created by the buyout of Brad Boyes. As far as upgrades go, it’s not going to get Florida over the hump. Unless GM Dale Tallon has something else up his sleeve, it looks like the Panthers are hoping for significant internal growth. That should keep them in the hunt, but they’ll need to catch a few breaks to make the cut.

TSN's posting double doses of Insider Trading videos due to the massive amount of pre-draft trade talk, and I should've known better than to simply post the Ottawa Sun's Bruce Garrioch's update on Jason Spezza's situation without looking for a rumor-related column on other Sun newspaper sites (the Ottawa Sun doesn't always post articles on his columnist page in a timely manner).

The Toronto Sun posted Garrioch's wining-and-dining update, and I need to say this out loud: while this summer's class of unrestricted free agents-to-be is particularly thin, I have the sinking feeling that we're going to see more classes like these--where second-line players and second-pair defensemen are the ones who hit the market and make top-player money, serving as the main source of player-value inflation (as yahoo Sports' Nicholas J. Cotsonika suggested).

The wining-and-dining period is great in terms of allowing teams to explain their expectations for players, and vice versa, but the number of offers these players are receiving over the course of consecutive days are driving up their asking prices considerably (of course, there are no numbers being exchanged ), and I really get the feeling that we're going to see Paul Stastny and Matt Niskanen become $7 million players come July 1st.

The free agent "wining and dining period" has been a bit of a pain in the rear to keep up with, but it's at least intriguing to witness player agents just cut out the middleman and tell actual reputable sources, "Oh yeah, we met with team X, team Y and team Z" instead of having to read someone's column about "league sources" (who are almost always agents or hopeful GM's).

But the Ottawa Sun's Bruce Garrioch has arrived in Philadelphia, and it wouldn't be the draft or five days till free agency if Garrioch didn't provide us with both an update on Jason Spezza's status...

It's believed as many as five teams -- including St. Louis, Anaheim, Phoenix, Nashville and Florida -- have made calls on the Ottawa captain. The club is mulling over what route to take.

With Spezza requesting a trade, the Senators would like to have a deal in place by Friday, but the club would like to get a No. 1 pick to replace the one Ottawa gave up in the deal for Bobby Ryan with Anaheim last summer.

Murray along with assistant GM's Pierre Dorion and Randy Lee were expected to sit down Wednesday to discuss the different scenarios because this is a deal that has a chance to be a game-changer.

1. McKenzie says that there are 3 teams in the Western Conference (Anaheim, St. Louis +?) and 1 "mystery team" in the Eastern Conference who are talking to the Ottawa Senators about Jason Spezza (who has a no-trade list of 10 teams, incl. Florida, Carolina, Columbus and the Islanders). McKenzie says the Senators want a 1st-round draft pick as part of the compensation package.

2. Dreger says that David Bolland wants "maximum value," and he wants an 8-year deal at $4.9 million to remain with the Leafs. Toronto probably won't give him the term he wants, but Bolland believes he'll be healthy by training camp;

3. Dreger says that the Oilers are looking for a center and a defenseman, and they're willing to trade the 3rd overall pick and/or Sam Gagner in their efforts to improve the team, which may include trading for the Panthers' 1st overall pick;

Nill was at the Detroit draft tables when the Wings repeatedly came up with the proverbial diamonds in the rough: Datsyuk with the 171st pick in 1998; Zetterberg at 210 in 1999; Tomas Holmstrom at 257 in 1994. The Red Wings rarely drafted anywhere near the top of the first round thanks to their winning ways during that time, but the mandate was still the same, Nill said: Find good players who could help the team, no matter where the Wings were drafting.

"Those were special players. But at the time we didn't know that. You don't know it until three or four years down the road," Nill said.

This year's draft will be Nill's second as the GM of the Dallas Stars. It has been a period of evolution for someone who used to be one of the guys who put eyes on hundreds of youngsters at hundreds of games every season. Living in Detroit, he could see junior, college, AHL and NHL games all within a few hours' drive. Not so in Dallas, and his job description precludes those kinds of trips anyway.

Just as longtime Detroit GM Ken Holland had to trust Nill and his scouting staff to identify the right players for the Red Wings, Nill now has to step back and convey that trust to the Stars' staff.

"I had to hand over the reins," Nill said. "If you're going to be a manager, you're going to have to let it go."

Updated 2x at 9:19 PM: Paul did a helluva job of covering the "gist" of the GM's meetings, but here are some items that I noticed on Twitter and feel merit mentioning, starting with Craig Custance's chat with Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman...

"I'm not happy with the situation our team is in as far as wins and losses. The effort has been better lately. We're going to continue to be aggressive and make changes that are important for our franchise moving forward keeping our focus on the future.

"We're excited about where we're headed, the foundation being built. We added two young pieces to an already deep foundation of players and prospects. This is a step in the right direction for the Florida Panthers.''

-Dale Tallon, GM of the Florida Panters. More from Georg Richard of On Frozen Pond including this..

Versteeg went on WGN radio in Chicago this morning and not only said he hoped former Chicago defenseman Brian Campbell would eventually follow him to the Second City, but that other teammates sounded a little jealous in their text messages to him.

As far as waking up went, Versteeg thought the trade might have been a dream.

Like most people, we’re fascinated to see how the Daniel Alfredsson experiment turns out in Detroit. But the one thing that we still can’t get over is that the NHL decided not to act on Alfredsson’s blunt acknowledgement that his previous contract with the Ottawa Senators was, in fact, a blatant attempt to circumvent the salary cap under the previous collective bargaining agreement. Alfredsson told reporters before training camp that when the four-year deal was signed neither side expected Alfredsson would play in the contract’s final year -- worth only $1 million in real money even though the cap hit was $4.875 million annually. It was exactly that kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge deal that the league had been warning teams about for years -- Alfredsson made $7 million in each of the first two years of the pact -- and which ultimately cost the New Jersey Devils mightily in their first attempt at a contract for the erstwhile Ilya Kovalchuk. The so-called cheat deals were, in theory, eliminated by new parameters put on contracts in the new collective bargaining agreement and the league’s position is that they are going to look forward instead of back. Good news for the Senators, but maybe in the spirit of CBA détente, the league should forgive the Devils the first round draft pick they must forfeit next spring for having done no worse than what Alfredsson admitted the Senators did in his case.

I'm curious as to why the Flames aren't being dinged for allowing Miikka Kiprusoff to retire early, too, but that's just me...

The Toronto Sun's Steve Simmons offers a scattershot slate of mostly Maple Leafs-related observations this morning, and the train of thought in this particular paragraph struck me as most intriguing:

Would love to know why Sergei Makarov, who was a top-10 player in the world from 1979-1989 is still not in the Hockey Hall of Fame....

Ran into Paul Coffey, Darryl Sittler, Marcel Dionne and a few more all-time greats at the Road Hockey To Conquer Cancer event at Ontario Place. If there’s a better charity event than this one, I haven’t seen it ...

Maybe it’s personal, but it makes me just a little uncomfortable to see Sheldon Keefe honoured this coming week for his time coaching in Pembroke. Maybe I’m too old to forget and or maybe I just know too much...

The best supporting actors in [Paul] Ranger’s return to the NHL: David Branch and Dallas Eakins...

If I was Dale Tallon, I would have given Tim Thomas the $3.75 million the Florida Panthers gave him but if I was paying him that much, I wouldn’t have given him a no-trade contract.

In his season wrap-up press conference, Panthers GM Dale Tallon was asked a question regarding Florida becoming a desirable location for free agents.

His response?

“I think we sent a message to everyone in the hockey world that this is the place to be,” said Tallon back on May 1. “Why wouldn’t you want to be here?”

Though not a free agent himself and with one year left on his own contract, Tallon and the Panthers decided Wednesday that Florida was indeed a place he should be for the foreseeable future, inking a multi-year extension with the club.

“I’m excited,” said Tallon Wednesday. “This is a great opportunity to keep the franchise on the right path. We had a good season and I just want to build on this past season the next couple of years.”

In an exclusive interview with the Sun Sentinel Panthers GM Dale Tallon stressed that while he will be searching for offensive talent, he’s not interested in a rent-a-player or burdensome contracts for aging and underachieving players.
Here’s an excerpt of today’s interview.

“We’re not sellers. Worse-case scenario, we’re looking to get better. Our goal since we’ve been here is to get better every day. How do we do that? Unfortunately, we’re banged up at this time, missing three key guys on the backend, so we got to find a way to get through this until we get healthy. We got five games before the deadline so we’ll know better. We got a good core, a good team, so it’s a matter of adding pieces now. We’re moving forward from here, we’re not subtracting!”

Does the surprising drive for the division title change your philosophy?

“We’re ahead of schedule. We’re happy where we’re at. We believe we can move forward here, we’ll do our best to get better.”

Looking for offense or defense?

“We like to score; the easier we can score goals the better it is on your stomach.”

While some fans were critical of the deadline deals which sent away veterans Cory Stillman, Radek Dvorak, Bryan McCabe, Bryan Allen and Dennis Wideman, along with three-year NHL veteran Michael Frolik, let’s face it, Tallon wasn’t exactly breaking up a winning combination. The Panthers had an opportunity to make a run at the eighth playoff spot, but squandered their chances during the week prior to the deadline. Florida lost identical 5-1 games to Ottawa and the Islanders, and Tallon had seen enough.

The case could also be made that all but perhaps Wideman and Frolik had no future role in the future of this team. Nonetheless, the Panthers have freed up a great deal of cap space. Now the question becomes, how do they use it?

The Panthers have just nine players under NHL contract for next season- David Booth, Stephen Weiss, Rostislav Olesz, Evgeni Dadonov, Steve Timmins, Jason Garrison, Mike Weaver, Dmitry Kulikov and Scott Clemmensen. That group takes up roughly $16-million-plus of cap space. So the Panthers will have plenty to spend, though they likely won’t touch the projected $59.4 million cap.

Big back to back tonight after a huge win over Washington on Tuesday in game # 51.

Now, I’ve mentioned the Habs and Panthers as potential trading partners a few times over the season. There have been rumours from various media personalities on the radio and in the Montreal newspapers. For the conspiracy theorists out there, we now have this report as the game begins tonight, courtesy of Apron Basu from the CTV Habs Hub:

Tallon is the seventh Panthers GM this decade to claim he has the tools to build a Stanley Cup champion. He’s the first with such a recent blueprint.

That’s why the longest-tenured Panther, Stephen Weiss, didn’t hesitate when Tallon phoned him in early June asking if he wanted to stay.

“He told me he’s here for the long term like he had in Chicago and that ‘we’re going to do the same thing here,’” said Weiss, a Panther since 2001, a year after the team’s last playoff appearance. “I told him absolutely, this is where I want to be.’‘

Weiss’ longtime teammate Nathan Horton had a different response to Tallon’s question, and was soon traded to the Bruins.

Tallon’s philosophy sounds a lot like another South Florida builder, Bill Parcells, who recently stepped down as the Dolphins’ architect, but remains a consultant for the team. Both believe that the draft is the key to success, and then surround the youngsters with veteran mentors who are tough, passionate and filled with character.

Futility in Sunrise has persisted for far too long, with the Florida Panthers on the brink of a dubious record after nine consecutive non-playoff seasons. Incoming general manager Dale Tallon has moved quickly in putting his stamp on the team with several transactions since taking over, but nothing to this point appears bold enough to turn his club from last season’s Southeast Division cellar dwellers into a postseason participant.

Sadly, more patience may be in order for long-suffering Panthers fans.

Even so, all is not lost for the NHL’s southernmost franchise, with several key pieces already in place for the future (and others right around the corner) and it isn’t as though the current roster is without talent as is. Still, a couple of major stumbling points remain for the Panthers. The 24 games they will play versus fellow Southeast clubs, three of whom look to be vastly improved and the fourth being the stalwart Washington Capitals, certainly won’t help and the expiring contracts for defenseman Bryan McCabe and goaltender Tomas Vokoun will have to be dealt with (and quite possibly dealt altogether), without either situation becoming a distraction.

Dale Tallon should get all the credit for finding and drafting the talent that brought a Cup to Chicago, and for that we should be grateful.

But the dismantling of the team also is on the shoulders of Tallon, who was incapable of looking into the future and seeing what he was doing to the payroll, when it was so painfully obvious to the rest of the league.

And only those slurping Kool-Aid by the tanker-full during the Tallon era didn’t see the incompetence, unwilling to admit there was no plan in place.

That’s right. There was no plan in place, a staggering failure to properly manage a team, and the consequence of overspending was a difficult summer of watching so many players sent away or set free.

Dale Tallon, the general manager of the Florida Panthers and the very first draft pick of the Vancouver Canucks, has had a lifelong love affair with golf.

This week, Tallon gets to tee it up with some of the world’s best senior golfers at the U.S. Senior Open at Sahalee Golf Club near Seattle.

Before heading to Sahalee, he talked about his game with Postmedia News reporter Brad Ziemer:

Postmedia: Is it true you almost didn’t bother going to your qualifier for the U.S. Senior Open?

Tallon: Yeah, I had just gone through a busy six weeks since taking over as GM in Florida and hadn’t played much golf. Fortunately, I had a 9:50 tee time as opposed to the normal 7:50. My wife said, ‘Why don’t you just go for a walk anyway’ and I had made arrangements for a kid to caddy for me and I didn’t want to let him down. So I went out there and after making a bunch of pars I birdied six and birdied eight and then I three-putted nine and bogeyed 10 and thought, here we go. But I made birdie on 11 and made a bunch of pars coming in.

Tallon is, above all else, a smart hockey man and one that isn’t afraid to pull the trigger on a deal. Maybe the best news of all is that Chicago, his old team, may be in the market to move a couple of warm bodies in the off-season because of a pending salary-cap crunch. With the cap space he has in Florida, and the hands-on knowledge of who makes a difference in the Chicago line-up, Tallon will be perfectly positioned to deal with his former understudy, the current Blackhawk GM Stan Bowman, if they need to dump salary in the offseason.

That sound you hear is the sound of about a dozen or more NHL general managers cheering, applauding for the hiring of Dale Tallon as the new GM of the Florida Panthers.

It’s not that they think Tallon’s a dope and will trade them Stephen Weiss or Nathan Horton for a song. It’s because Tallon was enormously popular as GM of the Chicago Blackhawks and most executives in the league believe he got a raw deal when he was dumped last summer by president John McDonough in favour of Scotty Bowman’s son, Stan.

It’s uncertain right now whether Randy Sexton will remain with the team in any capacity.

added 1:46pm,

SUNRISE, FL – The Florida Panthers announced today that Dale Tallon has been named the team’s new general manager, replacing Randy Sexton. Tallon will be introduced at a press conference at the BankAtlantic Center on Tuesday, May 18 at 11 a.m.

“On behalf of the entire organization, we are thrilled and honored to open a new chapter in Florida Panthers franchise history with the hiring of Dale Tallon as general manager,” said Panthers managing partners Cliff Viner and Stu Siegel. “Dale brings with him a proven track record and an impressive franchise-building resume that we believe is the perfect fit for the future of the Panthers organization. We thank Randy Sexton for his service to our organization and appreciate his continued support throughout this transition process.”

“It is with great pleasure and excitement that I join the Florida Panthers,” said Tallon. “I would like to thank Managing Partners Cliff Viner and Stu Siegel, Alternate Governor Bill Torrey and President/COO Michael Yormark for giving me the opportunity to put my mark on this franchise. I look forward to getting to work and will immediately evaluate our club’s framework, as we diligently prepare for the upcoming draft and free agency signing period.”

By asking a question of ousted Chicago Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon in today’s press conference I felt as if I was participating in more torture of a good man.

Probably every writer on the call, and presumably Tallon himself, believes he was unfairly relieved of duty on Tuesday when he was re-assigned to an advisor’s role. For the past 24 hours, the buzz around the league has been predominantly pro-Tallon.

Perhaps Tallon could have been a better communicator, and certainly he should have had his paperwork together on his restricted agents. But neither of those are offenses that should carry the penalty of dismissal, particularly in light of the fact that Tallon has pieced together the most exciting team that Blackhawks have had in many, many years.

Tallon characterized his conversation with McDonough as “cordial” and noted: “He wanted to take the team in a different direction and I was fine with it. Though my position has changed, my goal has not – all I want to do is help win the Stanley Cup; and I can continue to do that for the next three years. That brings me up to 2012.

“The discussion was cordial, businesslike and we agreed this was best for the franchise.”

It was a bizarre day on Madison Street, with Stan Bowman, son of Hawks’ pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain senior adviser Scotty Bowman, being elevated from assistant general manager to general manager. Tallon was dropped from GM to senior adviser.

And then there was Hawks Chairman Rocky Wirtz weighing in on what Stan Bowman brings to the job that Tallon couldn’t.

“He’s 36, Dale’s 58,” Wirtz said. “We always want younger people, so what he brings is a system in place to get better. It’s nothing that Dale was doing, but also Dale’s at the tail end of his business career. I’m at the tail end. I’m 56. I want my son and cousins to do better than I am. I have a son who’s 32. I hope they are constantly pushing me.

“We constantly want to bring younger people up in the organization. We don’t want a bunch of players that are 42 years of age on the ice. There’s a reason for that.”

Paging Dale Tallon: Your attorney is on line 2 talking excitedly about an age-discrimination suit.

In life, even in the mixed-up world of professional sport, the assumption is usually that good work will protect you. Provided you produce the necessary results, personality conflicts or internal politics or the fact that you were associated with a previous regime should not be held against you.

Presumably, that’s what Dale Tallon thought, too. Up until Tuesday when he was unceremoniously kicked upstairs, Tallon was the fourth-year general manager of the Chicago Blackhawks, one of the brightest and best teams – and stories – in the NHL last season.

I’ll talk more specifically about trades in a blog Wednesday before the NHL schedule is released, but the Blackhawks are in deep trouble when it comes to the salary cap. They’re almost $3 million over now and next year they’re at $42-plus million on a cap that will surely come down from $56.8 million. And, they have to sign Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith next summer. What if Toews and Kane want Malkin-Crosby-like second contracts?

The Chicago Blackhawks have promoted Stan Bowman to General Manager and have reassigned Dale Tallon to the position of Senior Advisor, Hockey Operations.

“We are very proud to promote Stan to his new position of General Manager,” Blackhawks President John McDonough said. “He brings a comprehensive knowledge of hockey, along with a tremendous intellect and methodical approach to building a successful team and sustaining success. His involvement with our organization and strong understanding of our roster and our system create a very natural and strong transition. Dale will continue to be an important part of our organization, as he has been for many years.”

Late Monday night sources told me the Blackhawks had fired Dale Tallon as GM and replaced him with Assistant GM Stan Bowman. With Rick Dudley already gone to Atlanta this off-season, it means that the Blackhawks have turned over virtually their entire front office since John McDonough came in as president, with Bowman being the lone exception.

First, some thoughts about Bowman. Stan is a very sharp guy. Though his background is the financial side, rather than the player/scouting side, he’s been around hockey all his life. (He was named after the Stanley Cup for Pete’s sake!) He’s been involved in the decisions about on-ice personnel since I’ve been around the team. With Stan, the club is in good hands going forward.

But how Stan ascends to the general manager’s position, and how it became available in the first place, betrays big political maneuverings in the front office. Those kinds of things are never healthy—not when those conflicts are ongoing, and in the end they aren’t healthy for those who survive the conflict. These kinds of manifestations of petty jealousies are worrisome for a franchise that has had so much going in the right direction.

from Tim Sassone of Between The Circles at the Chicago Daily-Herald, Blackhawks GM Dale

Tallon admitted Wednesday the team made a mistake getting qualifying contract offers to his restricted free agents on time but claimed the goof did not force them to overpay for Kris Versteeg and Cam Barker.

Versteeg and Barker signed three-year, $9.25 million contract extensions after earning $984,000 and $490,000 last season, respectively.

“I think that we got them at fair market value,” Tallon said. “When you compare the comparables, looking at the point production of Barker and Versteeg and all the other players, those numbers are right in line with what they possibly would have gotten in arbitration. We’re happy to get them long term.”

...Despite the job Tallon has done in four seasons as Hawks GM, rumours persist that he and McDonough don’t see eye to eye.

“No, it’s not true,” McDonough said this week, as the playoff returned to Chicago for the first Round 2 in 13 springs. His take on why the smoke of Tallon’s dismissal continues to waft over the NHL landscape?

“Any time that somebody new comes in to run an organization, and you’re getting to know people’s styles—and their styles are different than yours—that’s probably going (perceived) that there is friction between the president and the general manager,” McDonough said.

“Dale is more of a laid back, casual, get-it-done (guy), but in a different style. Mine is more aggressive. It’s everyday aggressive. So, we’re learning more about each other.

With the hiring of Joel Quenneville as Savard’s replacement, some of the focus of the rest of the management team, consisting of Wirtz, McDonough and senior adviser Scotty Bowman, likely will shift to Tallon.

“I can handle it,” Tallon said of the scrutiny. “That’s what we’re in this business for. As John has said, this is a big boys table, a big boys club. We’re here to win. I’m going to give it my all.”

The Hawks have made three coaching changes since Tallon was named the eighth general manager in team history June 21, 2005. Tallon’s first act was to let coach Brian Sutter go. His replacement, Trent Yawney, was dumped Nov. 27, 2006.

The Chicago Blackhawks announced today the addition of Marc Bergevin as an assistant coach on Joel Quenneville’s staff. Bergevin, 43, is currently in his third season in the Blackhawks front office, having previous served on the scouting staff, which includes his most recent stint as the director of professional scouting. The Montreal native joins John Torchetti, Mike Haviland and goaltending coach Stephane Waite as the fourth member on Quenneville’s staff.

The GM of the Hawks joins Hockeycentral at Noon to discuss the progress of the Khabibulin situation, whether the team would consider sending him to the AHL, and how soon we could expect another development with the goalie.

Update 2:28pm ET: At Sportsnet.ca another interview cited from Fan590 which featured these comments from Jay Grossman, Khabibulin’s agent:

“There are several teams that have expressed interest, with our permission being given by Chicago to talk to those teams. At the same time, Chicago is aware of a number of options they have by virtue of trade, whether it be now or whether it be down the road. We assume that at least as far as the start of the season is concerned that (Khabibulin’s status) would be determined well before then.”

Doug Wilson, Ken Holland, Dale Tallon and Doug Armstrong have spent a lot of time in recent years trying to outsmart each other. We’re talking about three NHL general managers — Wilson with the Sharks, Holland with the Red Wings, Tallon with the Blackhawks — and Armstrong, an ex-GM in Dallas who is now part of the Blues’ front office.

No matter. The four of them are heading to Ireland next week, leaving families behind to knock a golf ball around some of that country’s fine courses.

Tallon added he’s still working the phones to improve the club before the trade deadline.

“Until Feb. 26 we’re going to put our nose to the grindstone every day to improve,” he said. “If it makes us better, we’ll do it. If it doesn’t, then we’ll move on and let our kids develop.”

Tallon said trade talks “are starting to pick up. There’s a lot more conversation.” But he acknowledged it’s difficult to make trades in the NHL and that teams are asking for some of the Hawks’ top prospects.

“With the [salary] cap, terms, lengths of contracts and all that stuff it is difficult,” he said. “We have to find a way around it….